Taupo coffee stop creates memento

Stop in Taupo for coffee ... and you can drive away knowing that the ceramic mug you drank from will follow you home.

Of course, your coffee stop will have to be the Creative Cafe, where former London-based physios Jonathan Garlick and Tam Holden have turned their favourite chill-out activity into a business venture.

The Creative Cafe offers customers the chance to capture their creativity in ceramics, applying paint to unglazed dinnerware.

The husband-and-wife team provide stencils, pictures to trace, paintbrushes and - creative advice.

The pair mastered painting techniques in London and, back in New Zealand and keen stick with their brush skills, set up the cafe.

Now, after customers have personalised dinnerware, the cafe proprietors glaze and fire the decorated pieces, and post them to out-of-towners.

They say the customer's sole limitation is his or her imagination but they are on a steep learning curve too. "Every time we fire we learn something. There's a degree of surprise every time we open the kiln," Mr Garlick says.

- NZPA

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